Rick and the team continue work at TF1, where Vanessa Lucido reports the caisson is at 104 feet and the dig has reached 92 feet. After recovering a Kaufman rubber boot manufactured in the early 1900s, the team believes they may be digging in the location of the Roosevelt shaft, where the Old Gold Salvage and Wrecking Company excavated to approximately one hundred feet before cave-ins and flooding halted their effort. Doug Crowell shows Rick a letter from Duncan Harris to Franklin Delano Roosevelt confirming that the Roosevelt team cleared the pit to 107 feet, where they found a platform across the bottom of the cribbing they could not remove. In 1861 the Money Pit collapsed, which may explain the quantities of broken timbers the team has been finding. At 107 feet, Gary Drayton and David Fornetti search the spoils. Gary recovers a wood peg and an old heavy fastener that Laird Niven identifies as hand forged. Later, Vanessa informs Marty, Rick, and Laird that the caisson has reached 137 feet. Rick tells Vanessa the vault should appear near 150 feet, and Vanessa says they will continue to 160 unless bedrock stops them. At that depth the hammer grab returns mostly water. Crane operator Michel Ouellette reports the grab is sliding off whatever sits below. A smaller sixteen-ton grab with a wider mouth is tried, but it too brings up only water and sand. Danny Smith, Andrew Beaulieu, and Vanessa all conclude they are hitting rock, and Rick declares TF1 finished. Steve Guptill and Scott Barlow arrive with metal pieces found in the TF1 spoils that will need XRF testing.
Near the southeastern corner of the swamp, Marty, Alex Lagina, and David scan for evidence that the stone path continues toward the Money Pit. The previous week, Alex and David found what appeared to be a continuation of the road using GPR. If the team can confirm the feature outside the restricted area, they can apply for a permit. Alex uses the OKM Gepard GPR 3D scanner and detects an anomaly about three feet deep that resembles a road. At the research center, Marty, Alex, David, and Steve review the plotted GPR data, and Steve concludes they have found at least a path heading toward the 16th-century pine tar kiln. Marty decides to send Gary to metal detect the area. On Lot 15, Gary and Peter Fornetti dig up targets Gary has marked along the possible stone path. If the artifacts predate 1795, the team can apply for an excavation permit. They recover a large spike, the head of a small claw hammer, and a spike with a square head.
At the Archaeology Trailer, Marty brings the metal pieces recovered from the TF1 spoils to Kelly Bourassa and archivist Joan Barker. Kelly places the first piece on the XRF, and it reveals mostly iron with 0.035 percent gold. The second piece is also primarily iron but contains 0.022 percent gold. At the wash table, Jack Begley, Alex, and Eric Valois search the spoils one final time for leather, parchment, or bookbinding material. Alex finds a piece of concrete, and Jack spots another piece he believes could indicate they are close to where the 1861 collapse occurred. Dr. Ian Spooner examines the concrete and confirms the razor-sharp edge is not natural and should be tested.
The team meets in the War Room to decide where to place the next shaft. Doug argues they were too far to the west and that the collapse in 1861 occurred to the east, where an attempt to retrieve two twenty-inch-tall stacked chests from one hundred feet deep triggered a seawater flood through the tunnel that caused the Money Pit to collapse. The team agrees to target CD4.5 because of the collapse history and the artifacts previously found in that borehole.
